


Defenseless (For Your Eyes Only)

by agenthill



Series: And, In Sign of Ancient Love, Their Plighted Hands They Join [33]
Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Epistolary, F/M, Lovers to Friends, Past Relationship(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-08
Updated: 2017-10-08
Packaged: 2019-01-10 14:36:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,032
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12301185
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/agenthill/pseuds/agenthill
Summary: It is an apology and an admission of defeat in one—for he did warn her, all those years ago, that returning to fight in the Crisis would kill her, and she, naïve and desperate both, had insisted that she would die many times over so that their daughter would never know the horror of war.  Now, Fareeha fights anyway, and she may have only died the once, but it was a horrible, drawn out affair, slowly losing sight of herself over the years, rotting away until there was nothing left.  He was right: Overwatch was built only to destroy, but what more hassheever done?Or,A series of letters written during Ana's time as the Shrike.





	Defenseless (For Your Eyes Only)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [caesurae](https://archiveofourown.org/users/caesurae/gifts).



> first off, this fic is for maddy, who is lovely, and also is kinda the reason i started really writing a lot of pharmercy fic. i read one of her fics, and i loved it so much i wanted to meet her, so i started writing a ton of stuff to try and get her attention (LMAO)... and it worked! so hey, theres that. a happy (belated) birthday to the most talented author fandom has ever brought me into contact with!! <3
> 
> also: as i've mentioned... at various times in this series... ana in this canon is bi. so here is a fic about her and canadad, whom she was once In Love With and still does love, if in a different way. if you'd rather just read about f/f, and thats what ur subbed to me/this series for then skip this one, i guess, but what it boils down to is: i, a lesbian, thought this was an important part of her story to tell.
> 
> also, Very passing reference to it here, but canadad is Deaf in my canon. for reasons im too lazy to re-outline here.

_~~My dearest,~~ _ _~~Dear,~~   ~~My sweetest friend,~~ ~~~~_

(Beginnings, Ana knows, are second only in difficulty to endings, and this, the beginning of a letter about an ending, is an especially difficult thing.  For what can she call him, the man with whom she might have spent her life?  Not her dearest, surely, that privilege she forfeit the day she returned to active duty, leaving him behind in the home he had bought for them, a newly weaned Fareeha in one arm and the engagement ring she returned in the other.  Dear, however, seems too cold, too informal—for certainly they have some relationship, having known one another now for nearly twenty-six years.  That does not make him her _friend_ however, for they are more than that, somehow, and less all at once, are bound to each other by having raised their daughter, and by something else, a ghost of almost-feeling.  Were he anyone else she might simply call him by name, avoiding this problem entirely, but that, too, feels wrong; the name he has on paper has never captured his essence so well as the sign she knows him by, the brush of her own fingers against her cheekbone as she forms it.  No, he is none of the things she might call him, is somehow more and less to her than anything they could contain.)

السلام عليكم ورحمة الله

(This seems best.  It avoids the trouble of addressing him directly, of specifying who they are in relation to one another, and doubles as a signal that the letter must be burned, and not simply disposed of.  It is practical, too, is enough that he will see her touch in the letter without her ever needing to sign.)

_~~I am alive.~~ _ _~~I did not die.~~   ~~The heart you could not hold still beats inside my chest.~~_

(No, no, and _certainly_ not.  None of these things are true.  Ana Amari is not alive, was killed by Overwatch, by the Widowmaker, by herself.  She _did_ die, and whoever the woman writes this letter is—that is not the woman he knew, and the heart she hardened then has long since turned to stone.)

_You were right.  Overwatch was built only to destroy, and my only fortune is that it took so many years before that destructive force turned on me._

(It is an apology and an admission of defeat in one—for he _did_ warn her, all those years ago, that returning to fight in the Crisis would kill her, and she, naïve and desperate both, had insisted that she would die many times over so that their daughter would never know the horror of war.  Now, Fareeha fights anyway, and she may have only died the once, but it was a horrible, drawn out affair, slowly losing sight of herself over the years, rotting away until there was nothing left.  He was right: Overwatch was built only to destroy, but what more has _she_ ever done?)

_I am ~~safe~~ ~~recovering~~ elsewhere, now.  Do not look for me._

(She does not say: you would not recognize what you found, but that is so.  There is little enough left, now, of the woman he has known.)

_If you wish to write back, your letter will find me, but I would not ask a reply of you._

(She has not the right to.)

_Yours ~~,~~_

(And that is true, in a way, part of her _is_ his, just as a part of her belongs to the other people she has loved.)

_~~Ana~~ _ _~~Horus~~ _

(It feels strange to sign with a name that does not belong to her, with an identity she can no longer claim, and so she does not, merely goes back and removes the comma after _Yours._   For now, that can be all she is.  With time, she is sure she will rename herself, will become something, someone new, but this can be _enough_ in the moment.)

* * *

السلام عليكم ورحمة الله

(The second letter begins easier than the first, once she is over the initial shock that there is to _be_ a second letter, that he has written back, even if her Fareeha would not—could not?)

_Your letter found me as well as could be.  I was injured ~~in more ways than one,~~ ~~when I died,~~ on my last mission, and recovery has not been as quick as I would like.  Some things, once changed, are never the same._

(The same, she knows, could apply to their relationship, could be said of her having left, all those years ago.  In a way, that leaving was a precursor to this—for if she could leave him, could leave their _daughter_ behind, then why did she expect she would stay with Overwatch?  Nothing, it seems, could be enough to hold her, could be enough to stop her from selfishly running from those who need her, claiming it is for the best; best for whom?)

_Nonetheless, I have made a little life for myself here, I have shelter, and income, and food; I suspect that is what you would prefer to know. ~~You always were practical like that.~~   I am as safe as one could reasonably expect me to be ~~, and you know I am not prone to unnecessary risks~~.  I do wish you would not worry so much, even if I find myself now understanding the impulse, wishing I could watch over ~~our~~ Fareeha._

(She finds herself wondering where their boundaries lie now, what is appropriate for her to say to him and what is too familiar.  Can she mention his tendency to be practical, to address the needs of the individual first, a contrast to her own habit of thinking in terms of what she can do to save her community—or will this be taken as the barb it once was, when they fought over her decision to join the newly formed UN Strike Force which would become Overwatch?  Can she say she does not take unnecessary risks, when she knows that he thinks of everything she does as such a thing, now that the Omnic Crisis is over, when she thinks the same of Fareeha’s enlistment?  Can she call Fareeha theirs, when she and Fareeha have had very little to do with one another, in recent years?)

_I am sorry to have made you worry._

(She does not specify when—and perhaps she means every time.)

_Yours._

* * *

السلام عليكم ورحمة الله

(The seventh letter comes easier, still, than the ones before it—by this time, it is almost routine.  By this time, the memory of agonizing over how to begin her first letter seems so, so far away.  Still, she is not certain, yet, what it is they are to one another, how these letters fit into any understanding of relationships—but perhaps she does not need to be certain, anymore.  Perhaps all she needs is for this to _exist,_ even if she cannot classify it.  Existence, in and of itself, can suffice.)

_I am sure, that by the time you are reading this, you will know far more than what I am saying here, now, as the news is breaking. ~~There are so many things that~~ ~~The situation is more complicated than~~ Yes, I ~~knew~~ felt this was coming, but not like this.  There were signs for years, among the leadership, and by the time I ~~died~~ ~~left~~ broke with the organization, that things would come to a head was abundantly clear.  But that does not mean I could have ever anticipated what has happened._

(Even as removed as she is, now, from society, the Shrike has heard of the Fall of Overwatch, is watching a live feed of the rubble burning, anxiously waiting to hear the names of friends still missing, to see that they are safe.  She knows, of course, that they will not all be, but _some_ must be, surely, and she cannot escape the news, in any case, so she may as well keep a silent vigil, if nothing else.  If she can do nothing else, could do nothing else, she owes them this much.)

_I do not know if things might have been different ~~if I did not leave~~ ~~if the woman I was did not die~~ if I were there, do not know if I could have stopped it—but I do feel guilt, all the same.  Jack and Gabriel ~~are~~ were ~~my~~ ~~her~~ trusted friends, and perhaps I could only have delayed the inevitable, for surely I could not stop their fighting, even when I was ~~alive~~ ~~Ana~~ there, but in doing so I might have changed this ending.  _

(The Shrike is no fool, she knows that all things must end, but the legacy of Overwatch need not have been _this_ , so much charred flesh and smoking rubble, could have been an end with dignity, with some honor, with less—or different—deaths.  Let her own death be an example of that.  But, then, her own death is half of the trouble, for how can she place herself within this narrative, how can she begin to make sense of this when she does not know where the woman she was ends and the woman she is begins.  How can she understand her guilt, her role, if she does not know whom she is?  And how can he, who never truly knew any of them?  But writing him, putting words to paper, is better than turning the situation over and over in her mind, slowly going mad with it.  He is far enough removed to not know to blame her, and close enough to know how much this impacts her.)

_My only solace is that, even if I could not stop this, I prevented Fareeha from being there.  My failures did not cost her her life._

(She knows he disapproves of the way she and Fareeha argued over her daughter’s decision to enlist—but he will understand this much, surely.  If Ana had not ensured Fareeha was not recruited into Overwatch, he and the Shrike might be childless now.)

_Please tell her I love her.  I have never been more grateful that the two of you are safe._

_Yours,_

_The Shrike_

(She knows, now, who she is, is becoming _someone_ again, even if in the most painful way.  Now, there is no going back to Ana, defined as she was by Overwatch.  Someone new must take her place.)

* * *

السلام عليكم ورحمة الله

(By the seventeenth letter, they have fallen into a routine—or as near to one as her current life allows.)

_I thought, today, that I saw a ghost.  Forgive me, please, for how it must have felt to receive my first letter.  I ~~was~~ ~~am~~ can be selfish, and I realize now that ~~despite the fact that it was what was best~~ my actions must have been a shock to you—please believe that my intent was never to hurt you, then or now.  ~~Perhaps one day I will be worthy of your forgiveness~~ _

(The moment the Shrike saw the Reaper, she knew him for who, and _what_ he was, a ghost just like herself, and thought of how she mourned, how it felt that she lost him, and realized, then, the enormity of what she had done, all those years ago.  Desperation had made her selfish, had made her cruel, had made her a coward—for surely it would have been better to have left in any other way, would have been kinder to have ended Ana’s life any other way.  Ana was selfish to leave, and the Shrike is selfish to stay.  No matter what was best for her, she can no longer pretend it was best for _them_.)

_Tell Fareeha, too, that I am sorry.  I love both of you ~~more than I ever said~~ deeply._

(More, even, than she can say now, more than she _deserves_ to claim, after all that has happened between them.)

_Yours,_

_The Shrike_

* * *

السلام عليكم ورحمة الله

(Letter twenty-three begins the same as the rest before it, belying the great changes in the Shrike’s life since last she wrote.)

_It seems that I have found myself heeding ~~some of~~ your advice.  ~~It was not intentional but~~ I have recently come into contact with an old friend.  While I cannot imagine it will stay this way forever, he is currently ~~living~~ ~~staying~~ working with me, so you can at least for the time being stop worrying for my safety, ~~he will not let anything happen to me~~ ~~I doubt he would let me die on his watch a second time~~ I will be well._

(It is difficult, to speak to him of Jack, now Soldier: 76.  She does not want to give the _wrong_ impression—occasional sexual liaisons with other women aside, she has not been involved with anyone in her time as the Shrike, and does not see that changing in the foreseeable future—but neither does she want to give the very _right_ impression that she was not seeking Soldier: 76, had no intention of having _any_ sort of companionship, and even now would still prefer that she were on her own, as she does not feel she has the _right_ to be with those others she abandoned.  Her guilt is only manageable around Soldier: 76 because he left _her_ to die first; again, this is not something which bears telling, is something which could only be cause for further worry.)

_~~Especially with your holidays approaching~~ _ _I hope that you, too, are not alone, and that the winter there is a mild one.  While you are more accustomed to the cold than I, by far, you cannot pretend that it is pleasant, there, ~~cannot tell me that, old as we are becoming, your joints do not ache when it snows,~~ not when it storms._

(Loneliness may be something the Shrike chose—as Ana before her had decided that to be alone would be best—and it is unfair that he should suffer it, still, while she enjoys the luxury of having a companion.  She hopes, dearly, that he has found someone, a friend, or better yet, another, better love.  Given that he has mentioned no one, she finds it unlikely, but still, she hopes; he, of all people, deserves to be happy, should not be left worrying over her as they cross into old age.  Perhaps it is a hypocritical worry—for he _has_ had relationships since her, several, in fact, whereas she has been alone—but still, she worries; he has ever been more social than she, and the house he bought for their family seems far too large for one man, all alone.)

_If Fareeha comes to visit, ~~kiss her for me~~ ~~hug her for me~~ send her my best regards._

(She knows, by now, not to ask for more than that, knows that Fareeha does not want anything to do with her, and despite that knowledge, she finds herself wishing it were not so.)

_Yours,_

(For half an instant, she hesitates before finishing her letter, considers writing another name, that which belonged to her before—Soldier: 76 calls her by it, often enough, but she does not, in the end.)

_The Shrike_

* * *

السلام عليكم ورحمة الله

(The thirty-first letter is the last of its kind, heralding not an end, but a new beginning.)

_I worry for our daughter—I know you say she is happy, there, that she feels she has found her place, but ~~I felt that way once too~~ ~~Overwatch is not good for anyone, in the end~~ it is hard for me to keep an eye out for her, now that she is working with Overwatch..  In truth, I had hoped she would leave after the initial novelty wore off, after she realized it was not the organization she dreamed of ~~that there is no glory in being a hero, only pain~~ , but it seems she will not do so.  If that is the case, then it is I that must act._

(Even now, she does not want to say what it did to her, being in Overwatch, does not want to think of how it warped her, _destroyed_ her, until there was nothing left of Ana and she felt the need to become someone else, rather than to live with what it was she had done, been made to do.  Indeed, she could not say that, had she the desire, for she does not want him to worry over the words she will say next.)

_But she is not the only reason I am considering this.  Over the years, I have come to realize that leaving as I did was selfish, that it was ~~not in my best interests to stay but it was~~ not in the best interests of the many to disappear, not when they still needed me.  When I left ~~you~~ to fight in the Crisis, I swore to protect all of humanity; it is time that I kept my promise, ~~if just the one.~~_

(There are still so many things she will not, cannot say.  For while it was true that Overwatch was never good for her, she cannot tell him this as she returns.  What good would it do, to worry him, to tell him that she has chosen the good of the many over her personal happiness—what good would it do, to make him wonder, if she had done the same all those years before, in leaving him behind?  Let him think this is about her ego, about the same delusion of heroism that fuels the others, and not this: the simple knowledge that she does not _deserve_ happiness, does not deserve a gentle retirement, not after the things she has done in her life.  It is the least she could do, to work to atone—and Fareeha, Fareeha _is_ her atonement, is the only good thing Ana has done for the world.  If she can just protect her daughter, that would be enough for her.  And as Fareeha is with Overwatch, so, too, will Ana be.  Ana cannot save the world, she knows this but _Fareeha_ , Fareeha might.)

_I am returning to Overwatch.  You may contact me there._

_Yours,_

_Ana_

**Author's Note:**

> and i CONTINUE to avoid using canadad's name. i live to die another day! please @ michael chu name him so i dont have to get increasingly more inventive in my attempts to avoid doing so.... and also so i dont nearly have a heart attack when reading the tag for ana/canadad!!! for a sec i thought i fucked up and tagged ana/fareeha and nearly straight up died. thats a damn nightmare scenario!
> 
> TRANSLATION:  
> السلام عليكم ورحمة الله - literally, "peace & mercy of Allah be with you," used as a greeting--but ana chooses to use this specifically because materials with Allah's name on them are not simply to be discarded, but must be ritually destroyed. although canadad does not share her faith, he would know this fact (after having been more-or-less in she and fareeha's lives for decades) and take it as what it is: a covert instruction to destroy her letters when he is done reading them
> 
> title is from 1d's if i could fly... which u should def listen to...... its so good i always cry abt ana when i listen to it after 2am.
> 
> anyway thank u for putting up w my longass a/ns and also my continued stylistic experiments. ily for it! <3 rory


End file.
